Abstract

There have certainly been regrets since the start of my PhD, but in many ways those regrets are what have made my study what it is today. This paper will explore the start of my PhD journey when I made my first foray into data gathering, and follow the main regret from that initial starting point which has been an overriding factor in the shaping of my work, to the decisions made leading to my current focus. The initial study focus was to look at how closely classroom activities helped students when they left the classroom in terms of holding successful conversations. I used exploratory focus groups to gather my data with the intention of gleaning what ESL speakers felt they had learned from such language classes, both in Ireland and in their home countries. This phase was to be followed by classroom recordings where students were engaged in some sort of discussion, group work, or any activity that was student and fluency focused, and compare the language from those sessions with further focus group data from the same students. This did not go to plan, and what I did manage to
record in classrooms was of very poor recording quality. My personal circumstances then changed dramatically which also had an impact. The result? The data I had gathered with one aim in mind was now to be my primary data source – the actual new aim however, was not yet clear! This paper will end on a positive note by outlining and justifying the new focus in light of the corpus design, and highlighting the value of using focus groups in ESL data gathering studies.